The Secret to the Most Mind-Blowing Sex Ever

I will tell you the secret of the most amazing, mind-blowing, ecstatic, overwhelming experience of total sexual pleasure you can possibly imagine. I am not kidding and not fooling you. I know the secret and will tell you at the end of this essay, if you have not guessed it beforehand.

You would know the secret as well, except that you have been lied-to your whole life.

Yes, people you know and people you don’t know, people who have no worldly reason whatever to lie to you, have all been deceiving you. Some do it because they don’t know true from false, and they are just repeating what they’ve heard; but most know better, or should know better, but they have something they like better than they like hearing the truth, knowing the truth, telling the truth, and so their brains are full of feculence and their tongues are full of lies.

What they prefer to truth is flattery and self-deception and self-righteousness and all that heap of steaming manure called Political Correctness. What they prefer to their happiness is your unhappiness. The harpies are willing to eat filth and lick pus just so long as you don’t get to eat fresh bread and quaff bright wine.

But let us not pause to denounce sad falsehoods when the glorious truth beckons with her fiery lamp. How can one experience the perfect sexual experience?

In order to understand the perfect sexual experience, we first must say what sex is: it is copulation, the process by which two halves of a sexual whole find complement and completion, and reproduce. The sex act is the act of sexual union in sexual reproduction. The sexes, however, are spiritual rather than physical: men are masculine in psychology and mind and soul, masculine in speech and deportment and nuance in all they do just as women are feminine. The sexual union is spiritual, ordered toward the end of reproduction.

Next we must say what perfection is. Perfection is when an act achieves its end, its goal, its final cause, in such a way that no further act is needed or desired.

If the union were physical only, masturbating while ogling a photograph of your girlfriend, real or anime, would be as perfect as having the real girl with a real personality in your arms. If the union were physical only, hiring a temporary whore to service your biological appetites created by the backpressure in your reproductive plumbing would be no different than hiring a cook to sate your appetite for food, and visiting a cathouse be no more shameful than visiting a restaurant.

If the union were physical only, nothing but the physical sensation of the orgasm would matter, and rubbing your penis in an anus, mouth, armpit, elbow, or an elephant’s ear, not to mention the crevasses of mothers and sisters and underage children, convenient animals, and fresh corpses or whatever floats your boat would be called sex just the same as sex is sex. The word sex would refer only to the hunger for the sensation, and not to the sex act.

If the union were physical only, we would have no vocabulary to express the differences between sex and perversion, between masturbation and reproduction. It would all be sex, and the sexes of the partners, or the number, or their blood relation, would make no difference whatever. The absurdity of sex between members of the same sex, that is, the absurdity of nonsexual sex, would suddenly become invisible, and no words would exist to express it.

If the union were physical only, there would be no romance. Men would not court women. Women would not learn to flirt and be coy and never learn how to inspire pursuit. A woman could go her whole life and never have a sonnet written to her glory. She would never dance, not dancing like Fred and Ginger, but instead would listen to drumming, thudding music and sort of jump up and down while standing near the man who was not really courting her, not really sacrificing anything for her, not really in love with her.

If the union were physical only, you will be lonely forever. Forever.

But this picture of a life without romance is too absurd for words, so we need dwell on it no longer. Obviously it is false. Obviously love and romance is spiritual, hence sex is spiritual. Obviously sex is a spiritual union between opposite sexual spirits ordered toward sexual reproduction â€“ the point is so blindingly clear that, paradoxically, I can think of no argument to prove the point to a skeptic.

It is like arguing whether the universe exists. The universe in which the discussion is taking place is more obvious than anything said within the discussion.

Since sex is ordered toward reproduction, anything that hinders it is an imperfection. Prudence, if nothing else, would warn potential mother and potential fathers not to do the act which makes you a mother or a father until you have a household and loving union ready to rear children.

If you are artificially sterile, or using contraception, you are holding back, you are not passionate about the sex, you are trying to use the sex rather than surrender to the sex.

You are trying to have sex without really having sex, and this alters your soul and body in countless subtle ways, and the woman knows it, and senses the mistrust, the misgivings, indeed, the fear â€” the nagging thought that the contraception might fail hangs across the passion and prevents total surrender to passion. And if she is using the pill, her hormones, the ones directly related to fertility, sex, sexual passion, and love have been interfered with. But even if she is not using the pill, she is using you and you are using her, trying to get the union of sex without the physical sex act and the physical results.

The only way to make the contraception infallible is to agree to hinder the sex act by killing the child once he is conceived but before he is born, an act so horrific and unthinkable â€” even the Spartans did not make the baby’s own mother toss the helpless baby into the pit of the Apothetae â€” that no more need be said of it. If you doubt me, I’d like you to imagine holding your beloved in your arms, and whispering tenderly in her ear as the erotic passion mounts, “I love you and adore you and after I make mad, passionate love to you, we will kill Junior. We will kill him together! The doctor will pierce his delicate skull with scissors, and vacuum up his wee little brains!” â€” I am guessing that will kill the mood.

Since sex is ordered toward reproduction, you have to love the woman first, and want her to be the mother of your children, and want it more than you want life itself. Since sex is spiritual, you have to protect your children and your wife and make them safe. Your wife cannot be made safe if you are allowed to abandon her. Hence, since sex is ordered toward reproduction, you must swear, swear by Holy God and your hope of heaven, never to leave her, but to love and cherish her, in sickness and health, for better or worse, until nothing less than horrid death itself you do part.

For her part, she must vow to love and honor and obey.

And if you do not understand about that obey part, you do not understand women. She wants a leader, an alpha male, a chief, a Christ, and you must be willing to die for her as Christ was willing to die for you, or she will not feel secure in your love. If she does not swear to obey, you are not a couple, not a dyad, not a unit, but are still two sovereigns dealing with each other at arm’s length, not intimate, and she cannot trust you fully, cannot love you fully, not with a divine and self-sacrificing love. And she knows you don’t love her fully, not with a love that is more than madness, more than sense, more than the universe.

Have you ever heard of a love like this? Love larger than the universe?

You have never heard of romance, except as a silly myth that does not exist in real life? Never heard about true love, except as a punchline? Never heard of love that makes the angels blush red as the planet Mars in October? Love that makes hell tremble? Never heard a rumor about it?

No? This is because you’ve been lied-to your whole life.

Sex is spiritual because sex is divine.

No doubt the unwary reader is recoiling in doubt and dismay. Surely you have been told your whole life that there is no such thing as spirit, that spirits are not real, that reason and science have no ability to come to any conclusions on this topic, ergo each man is free to reach whatever conclusions he wishes to reach.

Surely you also have been told what the conclusions are that you must reach regardless of your wishes: surely you have been told your whole life that minds are sexless software and bodies are hardware, this hardware just so happens to have plumbing called sex organs which are tools made of flesh and blood to be used for whatever purposes you, in your sovereign majesty of defining your own personal reality, can use in any way as you see fit. The penis is no different from a pencil or a trip-hammer, hypodermic or harpoon, merely an instrument or device with no innate purpose or proper use.

You have been told that the male nervous system, down to the last cell and the XY chromosomes in each cell are identical in all ways to the female nervous system, and female and male thinking is identical in all respects. Any attempt to think otherwise is forbidden by the Thought Police.

Any attempt to advise how these tools should or should not be used is a sinister conspiracy against your sovereign independence.

Your mind â€“ no, correction, there is no mind â€“ your software running your body is itself sexless; for this reason any attempt by society to establish conventions, roles, expectations based on sex â€” no, correction, there is no sex, a word that refers to reality, there is only gender, a word that refers to arbitrary convention â€” any attempt to establish social expectation based on your gender is at best shortsighted folly and at worst a sinister and stifling oppression.

The upshot of it all is that girls, to be free, should act like cads, and boys, to be polite to girls, should act like craven eunuchs, catamites, and sodomites. Perversion is true freedom.

You have been told your whole life that the greatest sexual experience is to copulate with as many willing and comely partners, male and female, as possible as often as possible, preferably when drunk and without discovering the name or sex of the partner, and devil take the consequences. The best partner is a girl who has slept with more men than the village harlot, but who does not charge a fee. You remain together as long as it mutually suits your convenience, and, like suspicious sovereign nations forming shifting alliances between wars, you are always in the posture of gladiators, with your eyes and weapons forever pointed at each other. If you dump the girl before she dumps you, you get a point. If she dumps you before you dump her, you lose a point. It’s a game.

You have been told your whole life it is a meaningless game, because life is meaningless, and love is something you are supposed to have for the Party, and for the ideals of self-actualization, self-sovereignty, self-selfishness, but not for your partner. Love is nice when it happens, but it is something life owes you, not something you work for. It is something that happens to you, or something you purchase by an act of will, not something you sacrifice your whole life to achieve.

You have been told your whole life a pack of total lies that have not even the slightest and remotest relation to reality. It is all total, complete, absolute, unadulterated, pure-quill, high-octane, 14-carat and utter bullshit.

Are you ready now for your secret? The most ecstatic and longest lasting orgasms, one after another after another, the deepest joy, the highest triumph of love, physical and mental and spiritual and total â€” the perfect sex happens when you are with your one true love who is your wife and helpmeet, and you are married and bound with chains no man can put asunder, she has no doubts about you, and you and she have seriously set your minds to having sex during her most fertile periods to try to make a baby.

That is it. That is the secret. Sex is ordered toward marriage and children. Romance starting with the corniest wine and roses, dances and poetry and full moons and flowers, leads through the chapel and white gown of marriage to the wedding bower, and when you set about to fill the nursery. When you use it as sex is meant to be used, as, logically, the only way it can be used, it opens up all its treasure hordes of pleasure for you.

I have heard this now from dozens of married couples. You bachelors are screwed, and you couples who want no kids. Your love-lives are second-rate, cheap copies, and pathetic compared to what we have.

Romance is truth and truth is romance.

The system of mutual mistrust, mutual masturbation, and mutual loathing which the modern sexually liberated man has instead of romance, the system of using sex as a commodity is a falsehood, and a gross and ugly falsehood at that. You have been cheated by this falsehood of the perfect sexual experience.

John C. Wright is a retired attorney and newspaperman who was only once hunted by the police. He is a graduate of St. John College (home of Mortimer Adler’s “Great Books Program“). In 2004 he foreswore his lifelong atheism and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He has published over 10 SF novels, including one nominated for a Nebula award, and was described by Publisherâ€™s Weekly as “this fledgling centuryâ€™s most important new SF talent.” He currently lives in fairytale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children.

Have you considered pitching this article to Cosmo? It seems they’re always interested in this topic.

wiier9l

shut up fa aggot

annajkramer

my Aunty Allison
recently got a nice 6
month old Jaguar by working from a macbook.this website CÂ­aÂ­sÂ­hÂ­fÂ­iÂ­gÂ­.Â­CÂ­OÂ­MÂ­

Albert

Eh, I’m a Mormon. We already know all this.

timb117

Wright think you’re going to Hell. Following their antiquated rules just isn’t enough, according to these god created all of us, but he really only cares about Catholics

Shawn Smith

“Wright thinks you’re going to Hell.”

Really, did you ask Mr. Wright what he thinks about the fate of people who die outside the Catholic Church? Because I did. But I guess we’ll have to trust your psychic powers rather than my knowledge from an actual conversation.

timb117

Who the f_ck cares what Wright says? He’s not the Pope. Catholic doctrine says it

Shawn Smith

Actually, no, bright boy. Care to try again?

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Actually–the various Christian Churches have offered a variety of answers. In this country Evangelical Christianity certainly does argue that non believers and even Christians who don’t say the right form of words are literally going to hell. What the Catholic Church is saying today is also different from what it has said in the past. But you have to expect a lot of trimming from those guys.

Shawn Smith

Yes, but he was referring to Wright, who is Catholic. As to what the Catholic Church has said in the past, you’ve made extensive research of the history Catholic doctrine then? Or are you just assuming whatever seems convenient to feed your hatred?

JudgeDeadd

What does this have to do with this discussion? Are you just going to try and put in irrelevant ad-hominem jabs, thinking that it somehow helps your position?

Carter

Yes, that is exactly their plan. The misrepresentation of any position they hate followed by ad hominem attacks represent the bulk of what they are capable of.

timb117

Hon, ad hominem attacks mean insulting the messenger. I expressed Catholic Church doctrine. If you think that’s ad hominem, then I would suggest bringing it up at Catechism

Lol

If by, “expressed Catholic Church doctrine,” you mean, “I expressed a grossly ignorant and distorted view of the Catholic Church followed up by a fantastic claim to know the inner thoughts and motivations of a human I have never met before,” then sure. Why not?

timb117

Heck, I didn’t say that. I sometimes forget the average Catholic thinks Purgatory is a lovely resort

Lol

“Wright thinks you’re going to Hell. Following their antiquated rules just isn’t enough, according to these god created all of us, but he really only cares about Catholics”

When were we discussing Purgatory? And you absolutely did claim to be psychic.

barbarampons

My Uncle
Riley got an almost new red GMC Canyon just by some parttime working online
with a laptop. visit their website CÂ­aÂ­sÂ­hÂ­fÂ­iÂ­gÂ­.Â­CÂ­OÂ­MÂ­

Shawn Smith

If a brief metaphor is permitted, it seems to me like sex as you describe it is an adventure in uncharted wilderness, part of a real world with real consequences. Sex as the post-moderns prefer it is a cheap theme park ride, self-enclosed and separate from the rest of life.

(Of course, reality has hard edges and sharp corners, and they will never be able to seal this area off quite as thoroughly as they would like, but that is their ideal.)

Pete the Greek

“Sex as the post-moderns prefer it is a cheap theme park ride, self-enclosed and separate from the rest of life.”
- LOL! And like most theme park rides, most of the time is spent it total boredom, waiting in lines, hoping to get access after everyone else has already had a turn.

delurking

“Sex as the post-moderns prefer it is a cheap theme park ride, self-enclosed and separate from the rest of life.”

[Citation Needed]

This sounds more like your fantasy of what “those people” are doing, as opposed to how real life is being lived.

As I frequently tell my kid, life ain’t actually what you see on TV, pumpkin.

Maybe both you and Wright need to get out more? (Unless — as suggested above — you really are Wright’s Sock Puppet?)

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Heh. I was just thinking the same thing. These people are amazingly parochial in their thinking and writing.

Pete the Greek

“This sounds more like your fantasy of what “those people” are doing”
- No, it’s based more on single people people I actually know and interact with daily.

Pete the Greek

You sir, are a modern Socrates! GREAT read!

Shawn Smith

Nah, Socrates wouldn’t write a long essay on the topic. He’d just hang around in a coffee shop and strike up a conversation with a random post-modernist. He’d occasionally ask him questions about the nature of sexuality until said random post-modernist realized that his previous understanding of the subject was completely backwards and left, not clearly knowing what to think, but definitely knowing that he used to be wrong.

Pete the Greek

Agreed. I think more of a Cicero in the oration dept.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

The greeks used contraception freely. As did the Romans. Also: neither were opposed to homosexual sex and sex without consequences. Please try to suck up to some other philosophical tradition.

Shawn Smith

Child, I was not saying that Socrates would necessarily endorse Mr. Wright’s position. I was saying that Socrates would not use Mr. Wright’s methods. Once again, try to argue with what I actually said.

Have you read any Plato, by the way?

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

I’m 53, you pathetic wanker, and I have read both Plato and Socrates.

Carter

And there’s the ad hominem. You certainly conduct yourself as a 53 year old adult…

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Its not any more an ad hominem than calling a perfect stranger “child” to diminish their statements, or asking them if they have read Plato as though that were a rather rare accomplishment.

Shawn Smith

If your arguments are childish, I call you a child. What in my arguments gave you any indication of my sexual habits?

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

No, my arguments aren’t childish and I am not a child. Yes, your discussion is filled with masturbatory self regard and indicates a person who does not engage in normal social interactions: hence, wanker.

Shawn Smith

If that’s what you meant, you could have said I was a socially-inept narcissist. That would be much clearer and more decent. Why do you prefer the route of ugly obscenity?

msmischief

Claiming to have read the works of a man who wrote nothing is profoundly childish. Your not being a child only aggravates the problem, since a true child should be chided for interrupting adult conversation but offers genuine hope that he will grow up one day.

Shawn Smith

If you don’t want to be treated as a child, don’t speak like one.

And I must say, are you aware you are apparently sitting on a fortune? I would take advantage of a discovery like that immediately. You’ll be both rich and famous very quickly. (Although the fame would be fleeting.)

Andrew Brew

Interesting. What works by Socrates have you read?

Malcolm Smith

A while ago I saw an article entitled, â€śThe Best Sex I Ever Hadâ€ť. Apparently the contributors had all had a few score of sex partners, and some of them were fantastic. My immediate response was: So why arenâ€™t they still together? Did they get tired of great sex? Did they find something (temporarily at least) more exciting? Did that great sex partner grow stale, or was s/he lured away by someone offering even greater sex?
Life can be so unfair! You test drive 50 or 100 bedmates, and just when you find the one which is just right, s/he slips through your fingers. Donâ€™t you just hate it when that happens!

timb117

Did you read it with one hand free, voyeur?

JudgeDeadd

Are you hoping to win this argument by behaving in the most immature way possible?

timb117

Argument can sometime be questions. Sometime questions are questions.

Not sure if that basic logical syllogism is immature or mature, but pretty sure I WON this argument with you.

Lol

So your answer is, “Yes, I am going to try and win this argument by behaving in the most immature way possible.”

Of course, JudgeDeadd gave you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you had any argument at all. Flippant ad hominem is no more debate than a strip club is a dance studio, but it is all you’ve offered in any of your comments. Apparently, it really is the best you can do.

Shawn Smith

This is what he considers “arguing”. It’s . . . I don’t know whether to call it funny or terrifying.

SUNIX

Wow! It’s been more than 24 hours after posting this beautiful article and no cynics have taken a shot at picking it to pieces; perhaps if it had the word “Christian” on the title it would have by now. I’ll be checking it by tomorrow, just for fun.

Shawn Smith

That’s because he did not openly and directly criticize homosexuality. If he had done so, the LGBTOMGBBQWTF crowd would have already been here and flooded the comments with hatred.

(Yes, he did criticize homosexuality, but it was incidental and indirect.)

Shawn Smith

The trolls have arrived! And those who bother attempting to present any sort of argument at all are simply spewing lies. It’s kind of sad.

timb117

Lies = practices of humanity for a million years, which are unrecognized by Roman ascetics who never met jesus.

Gobbs

Good stuff. Surprised there are no trolls yet. I’ll start! “You’re beliefs will all be dead Ina generation if not sooner. Monogamy is unnatural.

Johnedko

First, a grammar quibble, one of your paragraphs in the middle (I know – bad directions, but just “find” the whole quote) begins with “Surely you also been told” – should there be a “have” in there?
Otherwise, excellent article and a lot to think about – I think I will forward it on to the Mrs. to let her look at it.
-John

timb117

Why “let” her? Didn’t you read this? Just order her to read it. She longs to “obey,” John. Seeks it out and wants you to tell her what to do.

Ye Olde Statistician

You evidently misunderstand the difference between conjugal obedience, filial obedience, and servile obedience.

timb117

Ooh, semantics by the guy who telling people how to make obey.

JudgeDeadd

Perhaps it’s a little much to demand of you, but could you please not cover your ears and dismiss people’s arguments? Or do you simply not have the ability to counter them, so all you can do is jeer mindlessly?

timb117

What argument? He proposes a three part, ecclesiastical definition to a common English word. I, and everyone else, look more to plain meanings…as in, if you tell your woman to obey, she doesn’t ask you a theological explanation, she expresses her disgust as an autonomous human and walks out the door

Lol

Is nuance in thought and translation something that only happens to other people? I can’t imagine how much trouble you must have with simple homographs.

timb117

Almost as much trouble as you jihadists do with simple homosexuals

Shawn Smith

Timm-eh, are you an Islamophobe? Should we report you to CAIR?

Lol

He certainly sounds like he might be committing a thought-crime. He should remember that Muslims are both a protected minority and non-Western.

Lol

There you go claiming to be psychic again. Wrong religion.

Ye Olde Statistician

Is that an anti-semantic remark?

similarnoumenalstructure

Yes. It is completely true. But of course, after you have the kids you don’t have the energy to do it like that anymore. But for a couple of years Ay Carumba!!

Bethany Spencer

Your writing is unfathomably awful.

goldushapple

Compared to yours, it’s rather amazing.

MPAVictoria

This was truly weird….

Stevenh

Wow. No sex if not to make a baby. No sex when she is pregnant (all the time, before menopause). No sex after menopause. No sex if infertile. This fellow should be a fiction writer

timb117

He’s a theocrat, so he already is

Shawn Smith

Could you please show me where he says . . . any of that? Any of that at all? It seems you’re the one producing fictions here.

timb117

So, you’re Denmond that you don’t understand that without a chance to make a baby which is the only kind of sex he says is Divine and pure, then other, non-procreative sex is not divine? Can you read?

Shawn Smith

If your wife dies of a heart attack, is it just to charge you with murder?

timb117

So, you can’t read

Shawn Smith

I asked you a question. I’m trying to construct an argument. If you want to participate in an actual discussion, answer the question. If you want to feel smugly superior, ignore me.

Are you even vaguely familiar with the Socratic method? Or is attempting to use that method also “denying history”?

Like jesus, Darwin is dead, so good luck getting an answer, but, in his stead, the preacher’s son and Bible scholar probably would tell you — lord knows life experience has yet to — that sex can have many repercussions and uses besides procreation: pair bonding, stress relief, immune system boost, decrease of likelihood of prostate cancer.

I dare say, Horatio, there is WAY more to Heaven and Earth than in your philosophy

Ye Olde Statistician

What has “amny repercussions” to do with the main basic function? Any product designer will tell you that there are always secondary basic functions, auxiliary functions, harmful functions, and the like. The pleasure of the marital act may be what induces people to engage in it; but that is motive, not purpose. It is the sweet nectar that lures the bee; but the sweetness of the nectar is not the reason for the pollination. Biologically — that is, from a purely materialistic perspective — the act has no other objective significance.

timb117

This sort of thinking denies the entire history of humankind in favor of an ossified theocratic institution, which demands it followers demonstrate fealty to archaic rules rather than the teachings of jesus. “Dr.” Wright is fascinated with politics, not sex or women or love or Christ. He is interested only in controlling others and, if they fail to follow his rather boring orders, he declares his perspectives Divine (as a way to choke off debate) and others, serving 90% of American women, as heretics to his rather narrow and hidebound views.

He deserves our contempt, as much as anyone who tell us God loves us and then shouts “know your place as a servant of men, women.” Either God loves and calls us equal or he ordained a hierarchical system in which he considers some of us less equal than others.

Just curious, are you aware that, by definition, the teachings of Jesus would also be “archaic”? If it disqualifies the rules you don’t like, then it disqualifies him too. If it doesn’t disqualify the rules, it doesn’t disqualify him.

Wright never claimed to be a doctor of any sort. That’s a really clever sideways slander of him there. Insulting him for fraudulently saying something he never did, “Astronaut” Tim.

As for the servant thing, anyone who actually takes the Bible seriously would not say women are merely to be men’s servants, because the very same passage which tells wives to obey their husbands says husbands must love their wives *as Christ loved the church*. That is, husbands must be ready to give up everything and even DIE for the welfare of their wives. But you surely already knew this, since you’re an expert on the teachings of Jesus, right?

timb117

Yeah, Shawn, I’ve heard that interpretation a bunch of times. Since there was no Church when Christ was alive, I find most ladies see your bullcrap recitation pretty empty

Oh, and are lawyers not doctors of jurisprudence?

timb117

Oh, and I forgot to tell you: Jesus’s teaching against usury are archaic, his dietary adherence is archaic, his keeping of the Sabath is so archaic you spent Saturday typing on a computer. Lastly, his line that not pen stroke or jot of the Mosiac law was changed by his ministry, meaning you can’t eat shellfish, are to be stoned for adultery or lying with a woman during her menses, and are supposed to marry your sister-in-law if your brother dies….

Those are archaic, Shawn. But, worst of all are the bulls_it teaching of St. Augustine and the other body haters. They created this weird Catholic fascination with procreative sex; Christ did not

John C Wright

“Wright never claimed to be a doctor of any sort.”
I did not claim it, but I have a J.D., which, technically, is a doctor of the law.

However, since I am saying things that are plain common sense, there is no need to appeal to any authority, secular or spiritual, my own or any other man’s, for proof. Nor did I make any such argument.

All this is typical Leftwing shriekthought. If you cannot answer the question, answer something that no one asked; if you cannot answer the question, attack the questioner. Since these tactics are silly and transparent, shriek. Make up in volume what lacks in quality.

Raptor Ackbar

Common sense, my ass. You wouldn’t know sense if it bit you in your bloated misogynistic ass, you fucking clown.

John C Wright

All this is typical Leftwing shriekthought. If you cannot answer the
question, answer something that no one asked; if you cannot answer the question, attack the questioner.

Leftism is a mental disease which robs the victim of a crucial sense of shame or self awareness. This poor sod does not even realize he is living proof of my point, and he did not even wait a single paragraph to prove it.

Attack the questioner, not the question, is the Lefty slogan.

Raptor Ackbar

Oh look, King Turd has descended from Shit Mountain to try and defend his pathetic screed. Nice try, you vile bag of guts. You’ve never been right about anything in your life. You know your bullshit is indefensible, so instead you ramble on in a drunken slur about ‘leftists’. You are truly subhuman in your stupidity and it makes me sad that you’ve reproduced to spread your idiocy to further human beings. I truly pity your children, being born to such a bleeding idiot and with such sub-standard genetic material to work with. Maybe one day they can aspire as high as high school janitor or garbageman.

Pete

Demonic.

Shawn Smith

“This sort of thinking denies the entire history of humankind in favor of an ossified theocratic institution,”

Does it not shame you at all to put together words into phrases that have no meaning and pretend it’s an argument?

If one is following the consistent-from-the-start teachings of a two-thousand-year-old institution, “denying history” is exactly what that person is not doing.

timb117

Because human history is only 2000 years old and only encompasses Western Europe and the United States? I would suggest Shawn that you don’t know much history

Shawn Smith

You say he “denies the entire history of humankind” I point out that he is, in fact, directly connected to an institution 2000 years old. You say, Well there’s other history too. What’s your point?

At the very least, he is acknowledging 2000 years of human history, which makes your accusation absurd. But let’s take a step back. What historical tradition are you drawing on that Wright “denies”? How old is that tradition? If less than 2000 years, I’d have to say he’s got history on his side.

timb117

Aztec, Roman, Chinese, Indian, African, pre-Christian Europe, Native Americans, modern New Guineans, Amazon natives…you know there are 7 billion of us and you only seem to care about small portion of one billion of them

Shawn Smith

Are you an Aztec? Do you sacrifice slaves to appease your gods?

Are you an ancient Roman? Do you worship Caesar as divine?

Are you Indian, African or any of these? Do you actually follow their real, historical traditions?

Because if not, you haven’t made an argument. I said that Wright is clearly connected to a real institution with a 2000 year history. I pointed out that calling this “denying history” is silly, and asked what *your* historical tradition was. You threw out a bunch of cultures you have no meaningful connection with.

toma

Wow Shawn you are smart.

“Does it not shame you at all to put together words into phrases that have no meaning and pretend it’s an argument?”

It’s an argument. Yikes you feel threatened, I know.

“What historical tradition are you drawing on that Wright “denies”? How old is that tradition? If less than 2000 years, I’d have to say he’s got history on his side.”

Are you Indian, African or any of these? Do you actually follow their real, historical traditions?

Because if not, you haven’t made an argument. I said that Wright is clearly connected to a real institution with a 2000 year history. I pointed out that calling this “denying history” is silly, and asked what *your* historical tradition was. You threw out a bunch of cultures you have no meaningful connection with.”

Historical tradition as bludgeon. If you’re a foreigner you’re a savage, If not then I spit on your post (no reason, I’m just in that mood). That’s why no one has ever respected the likes of Ghandi, at least outside of Calcutta. Anyway I’m A Christian 2000 Years I Win. Einstein weeps.

Shawn Smith

I haven’t heard of someone so completely missing the point since a guy picked up a bo staff thinking it was a spear.

What you replied to was not about the question of whether Mr. Wright’s views about sex are wrong. What I was answering was whether he was “denying all of human history”

Our friend “All lawyers are doctors” Timmy said that Mr. Wright was “denying history”. This was nonsensical babbling which he has never bothered to clarify. Mr. Wright did not deny that millions of Jews were murdered in mid-twentieth century Germany. He did not even deny that a certain president repeatedly promised that our health insurance plans would be unaffected by his favorite legislation. I’m not sure what history he was “denying”.

I pointed out that Mr. Wright is, in this instance, following the unchanged teachings of an institution stretching back 2000 years, which is embracing history not denying it. I asked Timm-eh what historical traditions he was a part of that have more seniority than Wright’s. If his ideology goes back 20 or 30 years and he’s rejecting the older one out of hand, maybe *he’s* denying history.

Instead of answering the question I asked, Special Timm-eh said that there are other cultures with different histories. But unless he personally is an adherent of these cultures, that’s completely irrelevant.

Does any of this prove Mr. Wright’s overall point true or false? No. But I’m pretty sure I can safely say that “denies all of human history” is absurd mindless blather.

timb117

God, that’s delusional

JudgeDeadd

What a brilliant and compelling counter-argument you’ve put together there.

Carter

You would still call on the name of a superstitious mythological entity you don’t believe in? By Odin that made me laugh!

timb117

I don’t come from your tradition. In fact, since it’s untrue superstitious nonsense I long ago rejected it and the misogyny and racism and slavery and comfort to the powerful and pedophilia you offer mankind. Other people understand and understood the human condition as much as the folks who met at Nicea did. For you to reject the experience and existence of billions of people to accept the sexual mores of a celibate clan of ninnies says something about your mind, Shawn.

Hint: what it says us not good

Shawn Smith

Let me fill in the missing part of your argument earlier, the assumption you never bothered to spell out: Every way of living is morally the same as every other. There is no better or worse; there is merely different. Anyone who asserts that one thing is better than another is a “cultural imperialist”. If people who live a particular way seem to do better than others in the long run, they obviously must have cheated.

This way of thinking will invariably lead you to side with evil over good, ugliness over beauty, and that behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.

That you are incapable of understanding the basis of your own argument says something about your mind, Tim.

Hint: What it says is not good.

thepalescot

I guess it’s tough being a 58 year old virgin.

Shawn Smith

I suppose it might, but what is the relevance to this discussion?

Adrian

Or hire a good sex worker.

Shawn Smith

If I didn’t already think you were onto something, the immediacy with which your detractors must resort to unintelligible nonsense and flat-out lies would clue me in that you’re probably right.

timb117

Shorter Shawn: I can’t think for myself. I just see good people and bad people and I judge them not their ideas. It’s just too hard for me to see an argument and think about it

Shawn Smith

What argument? You have yet to produce an argument. Any of you. Almost all of you insist on claiming he said, in this article, things he did not say, and then you argue with that. That’s not a debate; that’s babbling.

timb117

Hon, if we’re gonna have a discussion, you’re gonna have to explain your accusations. I already made fun of you and Wright for your 16th century, Western worldview. If you have a disagreement with what I said, then explain what I said that was so problematical. If, as I suspect, you cannot put three sentences together, then stop accusing people of things you cannot explain.

Shawn Smith

Do you realize that “made fun of” is not remotely the same as “argued with”? The second requires reason and logic, clearly connecting one idea with the next. The first simply requires being an obnoxious twit.

You have yet to cite any specific argument I made that you object to. … Still waiting

Shawn Smith

Which part of you haven’t produced an argument don’t you understand?

Shawn Smith

Okay, here’s my summary of your “arguments” so far: Not everybody in the world thinks about sex the same way Wright does. Therefore Wright is wrong.

I don’t like his conclusions, therefore Wright is a horrible, mean, nasty man.

That’s about the substance of your “argument”. There’s no logical progression of ideas. There’s no evidence or proof, just angry emotionalism.

KarenJo12

Wright’s position is that sex is only proper under the conditions he sets. We have noted that many people have excellent sex under other conditions and that many people who follow his rules have terrible lives. We have evidence that demonstrates that he is completely wrong. He is, however, a horrible person because what he advocates actually harms people, mostly women.

Shawn Smith

Since it’s perfectly evident by the vicious hatred you have blasted at him that you have not tried what he recommends, how can you possibly compare? You say you have evidence otherwise, but I don’t see how that’s possible. It is inconceivable that you have actually made a real experiment out of it, or have the slightest intention of doing so.

KarenJo12

I haven’t made an experiment of drinking lye, either, but I know that would be a very bad idea. I know enough about people to know just what a disaster Wright’s idea is.

Shawn Smith

Then you don’t have *evidence*, you have *assumptions*. There is an enormous difference between the two.

Shawn Smith

Do you realize that saying something is 16th century and Western is not remotely the same as saying it’s false, by the way? And I’m pretty sure Wright would be grossly insulted by your failure to acknowledge that his philosophy is much closer to first or second century.

timb117

His philosophy has nothing to do with the first century, since there was no church to promulgate theology at that time.

Still, and this us about the 50th time I’ve had to explain this to you, being Western and Catholic is the universal human condition.

Ye Olde Statistician

It’s not 16th century. Get in touch with the historical thingie.

timb117

Your concept of only screwing when making a baby is very pre-Vatican 2 and thus you might as well be damning Protestants in the 1560′s.

So, allusion is as lost to you as metaphor is. Let’s hope your god is less small-minded than his followers

Ye Olde Statistician

You really do not understand the teaching in this regard, and confuse the immediate motive with the ultimate purpose. The aforesaid marriage manual of my grandmother very clearly states that the purpose of marriage is not “to make a baby” because the latter can be accomplished by rape or casual fornication-and-abandonment. Marriage is to provide an environment for the rearing of children. (And secondarily for the domestication of males.)

Of course, a glance at Plato’s The Laws, Book VI, or at the Code of Khamurapi might also prove educational from the secular perspective.

KarenJo12

Would you mind defining “feminine” and “masculine?” Is it feminine for a woman to demonstrate an ability with math, or should she faint in terror at the appearance of a function sign? In fact, is it ever permissible for a woman to demonstrate competence at anything other than cooking and possibly needlework — which of course men would never dream of doing — or should we just never think at all?

Seriously, how do you define “feminine” and “masculine?” Do you have a list somewhere of what women are allowed to do and how we are allowed to do it?

Shawn Smith

It must be quite sad to be so bad at arguing that all you can do is attack things he never said.

KarenJo12

I seriously want him to explain what he thinks women should be permitted to do? He clearly believes women are completely different from men and that we like to be ordered around, so I want to hear from him what we should be allowed to do.

Ye Olde Statistician

You may be confusing conjugal obedience with servile obedience. Do we drive on the right side of the street hereabouts because we like to be “ordered around”? Could there possibly be any manner of ordering society that does not require being “allowed” or “permitted” or “commanded”? Maybe not everyone is socialist, requiring central planning and all.

KarenJo12

How is the custom of driving on one side of the road, which applies equally and without exception to every single driver in North America, remotely similar to Wright’s assertion that each individual wife is supposed to be completely and apparently mindlessly obedient to her husband? Please, someone, define masculine and feminine. I want to see, in writing, what you all thing the roles of men and women should be.

Shawn Smith

“Wright’s assertion that each individual wife is supposed to be completely and apparently mindlessly obedient to her husband?”

Please show me where he said this? I must have missed it.

delurking

Can you please answer the question posed by Karen and Timb? Explain what wifely obedience is, then, if it isn’t what they have defined. Give us some examples. Please. We’re interested.

Shawn Smith

If I had the slightest inkling that the question was a sincere desire to learn, I might. But the way Karen intentionally distorted Mr. Wright’s words right off the bat shows she’s more interested in attacking others than learning anything.

Why am I reluctant to talk about this with clearly dishonest people like yourselves? Matthew 7:6.

KarenJo12

Try. I do, really, want to hear your explanation.

Shawn Smith

Fine, you want me to answer you? You want me to believe that you are genuinely interested in learning instead of merely insulting? I’ll ask just one thing of you.

You have several times here grossly insulted just about everyone you disagree with. I can’t even imagine you apologizing to Mr. Wright, so howabout this? Apologize to his wife. You have said she must be a mindless slave. She has a blog with an open comments section. Go to her blog http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/ apologize for your repeated insults of her. Tell me when you’ve done so, and after confirming it, I will answer you.

If you will not do this, I stand by my assertion that you are more interested in viciously attacking “thoughtcriminals” than in understanding anyone.

KarenJo12

And you still won’t answer my question. I’m not going to agree with anything until I see what you have to say, and I di to share your presuppositions, but I am still curious to know how you will answer my question: what are men allowed to do to be considered masculine and what are women allowed to do to be considered feminine? What is the difference between intelligence for men and intelligence for women?

Shawn Smith

Why should I answer you? I gave you an opportunity to demonstrate your good will, to prove that you were not intent merely on attacking and denigrating, but on understanding. Why should I open myself up on difficult emotional questions to someone whose sole intent is to wound me? That would be stupid.

I also notice that not a one of the people on your side of this argument has said a word in condemnation of the man who all but explicitly said he enjoys taking sexual advantage of young women with emotional problems. I guess that’s A-OK in your book, huh?

plainsman844

I guess mocking satire is outside of your experience.

msmischief

Outside yours, evidently, since none has appeared here.

plainsman844

Good grief, what a disingenuous weasel.

Ye Olde Statistician

Wright’s assertion that each individual wife is supposed to be completely and apparently mindlessly obedient to her husband?

For context, could you cite the passage where Mr. Wright actually says that? I can’t find it.

KarenJo12

“f she does not swear to obey, you are not a couple, not a dyad, not a unit, but are still two sovereigns dealing with each other at armâ€™s length, not intimate, and she cannot trust you fully, cannot love you fully, not with a divine and self-sacrificing love. ”

If wives don’t swear obedience, they don’t love their husbands. Also, I still don’t see an answer to my question. Define the proper roles of men and women, with especial attention to the education permitted to women and how we are to behave toward physical and mental challenges. Do we actually do something or give up and beg Big Strong Men To Save Us?

Ye Olde Statistician

Was that “obey” in the conjugal sense or in the servile sense? I happen to have my grandmother’s 1910 marriage manual (in which she had pasted numerous news clippings dealing with the family, which is how it came first to my mother, then to me.) After noting with approval the then-current movement for emancipation of women, some points it makes are:

1. â€śLike all other social movements, the movement for the
emancipation of women is fraught with the danger of rushing into the opposite error of that which is to be remediedâ€ť and â€śpersist in confusing the true obedience with the false, in condemning an obedience which no Christian wife is supposed to render.â€ť

2. The woman was â€śtaken from his flesh and boneâ€ť and so is â€śnot to reckoned, among the rest of creation, as part of manâ€™s goods and chattels.â€ť

3. We distinguish between servile obedience and filial obedience. The former is the obedience of slaves, informed by fear. The latter is the obedience of children, informed by love. Likewise is conjugal obedience distinct from the servile. A wife is not a slave; and no man (if he heeds the first part of Paulâ€™s injunction) would treat her as one.

4. â€śDoubtless there have been many husbands who have demanded of their wives the obedience of a slave. And doubtless such husbands are largely responsible for much of the present (1910) misunderstanding of the nature and limits of wifely obedience.â€ť

5. â€śThe obedience of the wife is due to the husband only within certain limits. It is not absolute. It is due to him in all matters in which it is evident that he must rule. It is not due to him in those matters where it is evident that the wife must rule.â€ť

6. â€śHard and fast rules, however, cannot be laid down. Much depends on the temperament of the individuals and the force of circumstances.â€ť

7. â€śObedience must have its foundation in mutual love.â€ť Without this determination, â€śit will be useless to try to decide by argument who has the right to command and who the duty to obey. â€śThe love of marriage is a great mystery, and he who would reduce it to mechanical laws must possess a higher knowledge than that ever yet possessed by mere man.â€ť

Hope this helps. The Late Modern tendency is to reduce all relationships to political ones.

As regards education and vocation, we need only note that in the medieval world we find women in such roles for the first time.

timb117

So your grandmothers perspective is an answer to the question?

JudgeDeadd

Uh, yes? Why would it not be the answer? Are any and all grandmothers, by definition, wrong always?

Or are you going to address the lengthy argument, as opposing to making fun of it immaturely?

KarenJo12

Was your grandmother some recognized authority on family systems, who spent years studying couples with problems and without, who formed a coherent theory on wifely obedience? If not, then her opinion carries no persuasive authority.

Ye Olde Statistician

It was a book she had, published in 1910 entitled Marriage and Parenthood: The Catholic Ideal, so it was not just her “perspective.” The teachings in the book were pretty standard — the book bears an imprimatur — and represents official teaching. Biblical literalists, like atheists and other fundamentalists, always have trouble because they read the text (in translation) without the con-text. They always get annoyed when the Catholics and the Orthodox present a more nuanced teaching than their simple back-woods approach.

KarenJo12

So, what are the limits of wifely obedience? When can the wife tell her husband no?

Ye Olde Statistician

Most obviously, if he were to tell her to do something morally wrong. But more broadly in any case where his request is not motivated by love or where it is outside his competence.

KarenJo12

What’s wrong with discussing matters as adults and determining that she gets some things and he gets others? He respects her competence and she does likewise, like partners instead of master/ servant?

Ye Olde Statistician

Except that this implies two separate magisteria within what should be a commonwealth, you have gotten it! Congratulations!

KarenJo12

Discussing things is “two separate magisteria?” So you really do believe husbands issue orders to their wives in the same way generals order lower-ranking soldiers.

Ye Olde Statistician

No, the way you expressed it in terms of divvying things up implied “two separate magisteria.” I grant you the medieval legal maxim “pater paternis, mater maternis” meant that the wife retained ownership of all property she brought into the marriage (and therefore retained control of it)

So you really do
believe husbands issue orders to their wives in the same way generals
order lower-ranking soldiers.

No. If you would re-read what I actually wrote you would discover that I have said precisely the opposite. The Church does not teach servile obedience by wives, but an obedience grounded in love. Unless the husband love the wife more than he loves his own life, more than he loves his own body, there can be no conjugal obedience. But you keep framing it in secular terms of command-and-obedience, “condemning an obedience which no Christian wife is supposed to render.â€ť

KarenJo12

That makes even less sense than what Wright initially posted. So, exactly how does a wife obey? What are the limits? If there are no hard and fast rules on how it works, why make obedience part of marriage at all? Can you at least give an example of how wifely obedience works?

Ye Olde Statistician

That you want a set of rules is typical of Late Modern life under the Regulatory State. The messiness of real life involving people of differing personalities in different situations is something that cannot be captured in regulations, as anyone who has tried to write a commercial or industrial procedure can tell you.

Wifely obedience is no more difficult to grasp than husbandly obedience. Much depends on the competencies of the individuals involved. For example, in the classic middle class household of 1910, the husband ought not give orders to his wife regarding domestic arrangements, child-rearing, management of servants, management of the household finances, and so forth. The wife, for her part, was not to give orders regarding her husband’s actions at work, his management of the business, etc. But even the 1910 manual says that if the husband is a failure in business, the wife must take charge.

Of course, once women were sucked into the maw of wage-slavery, some things that were once unilateral have become bilateral a century later. The husband has no business trying to manage his wife’s work-life,either. Even so, in a duarchy, there must be some way of breaking ties.

The key is the first part: that husbands must love their wives. (In Greek society, which worshiped the young male body, the kalos kagathos, this was a revolutionary requirement!) It is much simpler to agree to something from someone who loves and protects you than from someone who thinks they own you and engages in the marital act solely for pleasure,as timb117 has proposed. That is why wives are not bound to obey husbands who act as tyrants and bullies, since their “orders” are not founded in love.

Once you stop thinking in terms of “giving orders” and “obeying orders,” matters become much more clear. Actually, a helpful starting point is management philosopher Mary Parker Follett’s Law of the Situation. In many cases, it is the situation that gives the orders, not any particular person.

Shawn Smith

Hmmm, I don’t see “completely and apparently mindlessly obedient” in there? Is it possible you’re inventing what you would like Mr. Wright have said so that you can argue with that?

Please tell me you can do better than this.

KarenJo12

If he doesn’t mean that, then he can answer my question: How are women supposed to behave to be considered “feminine?” How much obedience does a wife have to give? Every right-winger to whom I have ever asked this question evades it. It’s almost as if you all don’t have an answer or you know the answer is so thoroughly wrong everyone will reject it.

timb117

Can you answer the question or do you just plan on playing semantics?

KarenJo12

No, he can’t. Or won’t.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

You fought the good fight but there can’t be a response from a guy like the Olde Statistician. He answers by rote rather than with serious thought because he (and Shawn) don’t like to draw the obvious conclusions that Wright’s bastard Catholic theology would lead to. Socrates would be ashamed of them, actually, despite their preening use of him upthread.

timb117

Are you a nomme de plume for Wright?

shieldvulf

You are hilarious. I’m glad your wife puts up with you, so that you don’t bother others. (On line doesn’t count, of course.) You are one more example among so many of the reductivism and narcissism that poses these days as conservatism. Your childish insistence that everyone is just like you THINK you are belongs in a textbook of Abnormal Psychology. (In fact, it’s in there, even if you are not yet mentioned by name.)

The evidence is all around you that many, many people do not at all resemble your fancy. And instead of reconsidering your simplifications, you double down and insist you are the ONLY person who understands life’s fundamentals – which can only be understood one way, of course. EVERYone else suffers delusions that only you have escaped. That is so precious!

I hope I meet your daughter soon after she comes of age. I can confidently predict she will be wrestling with just the kind of daddy issues I like. I promise you, I’ll straighten her out. :)

Ye Olde Statistician

Seriously? That sounds like making sexual threats against a minor. Oh, “after” she comes of age. Of course. You’ll “straighten her out.” Let’s wait for the critics of Wright to pile one this one….

Shawn Smith

Nah, they have no problem with someone planning to take sexual advantage of a girl with emotional problems. Now, someone planning to have ordinary sexual relations with the wife he has devoted his life to, that’s just unbelievably offensive.

Rebecca Fuentes

Isn’t it terrible that his wife has to “put up” with a man who thinks men should love their wives more than life itself? Poor woman. Life with a man who adores and cherishes her is probably miserable.

KarenJo12

She has to obey him. All the cherishing in the world can’t make being a slave pleasant.

Shawn Smith

You really are quite simple-minded, aren’t you? There is either complete or total autonomy with no duty owed to anyone or there is complete slavery. There is no in-between.

I feel quite sorry for your slaves/children.

KarenJo12

I don’t expect obedience from my children. I explain that their assistance makes it possible for us all to do more fun and pleasant things, which won’t happen if, for example, I have to do all their laundry as well as my own. (My husband does his own laundry. ) They understand that we are in this together. When they were younger, I explained things as well as they could understand, but since they were babies some things just happened. Wives are not babies. They are adult humans, or should be, and therefore deserve to be treated as adult humans, which means they deserve respect and autonomy. You and Wright want perpetual teenagers who worship you, not partners who expect respect from you.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

This is an amazingly absurd article, even in its own terms. People have been having premarital sex, extra marital sex, and sex with contraceptives since the dawn of time. They have it because sex is enjoyable. If the “best sex” in a technical sense were only the kind of sex John C. Wright believes in people would be pursuing that with a vengeance. There would be nothing but married couples with 13 or 14 children, women with collapsed pelvises and horrible anal fissures due to too many children and poor nutrition, families tottering under the weight of more children than they can afford–oh, wait, that is what you see in countries groaning under the weight of Catholic teachings on sexuality. Are those filled with happy families? Does it matter if the parent’s sex life is mind blowingly good if they are raising up ten or 12 children in extreme poverty, as in Ireland and the Phillipines?

I’m a happilly married woman with two children. Before I wanted to have children I used contraception, during the period when my husband and I wanted to have children we did not use contraception, and then following the safe birth of our two children we went back to using contraception. Unlike John C. Wright’s imaginary interlocutors I am a real person. Sex is sometimes good and sometimes great–that has to do with the person you are involved with and other aspects of your life at the moment you are having sex. It has nothing to do with whether you are planning to procreate or not.

But in any event mind blowing sex is not the be all and end all of an adult’s world–maybe Wright should get out more?–especially not after you have children and you are responsible for their health and wellbeing. I don’t understand how Wright can be against single women having children and also be against married women using contraception. Wright is both arguing that parents should wait to have children until they can afford them but apparently the concept of “affording” children vanishes after marriage? Even married couples can have concerns–and should have concerns–about the financial propriety of having lots of children.

I realize that the entire essay is written in an airy, philosophical style which admits of no real world considerations but in the real world even happilly married couples sometimes have special needs children who require vast sums of money and parental care. Are such parents to deny their sexuality for the rest of their marriage because they can’t afford the time/money for more children when the first child or children are already so demanding?

timb117

Aimai, why mention single women? This essay is completely about men, directed toward men, and concerns men. You gals are the non-autonomous third parties in this discussion. When Wright wants to speak to you, he will marry you

Ye Olde Statistician

People have been having premarital sex, extra marital sex, and sex with
contraceptives since the dawn of time. They have it because sex is
enjoyable. If the “best sex” in a technical sense ….

Certainly people have been giving into their appetites since the dawn of time; though Socrates and his friends did not regard that as therefore right. Even the Epicureans despised mere pleasure-seeking! Today we have an “epidemic” of obesity because the sexual appetite is not the only one to give us cravings. Perhaps a better understanding of the ancient pagans is required.

timb117

So, Greek and Roman ascetics are the only people you recognize in t he whole of human history? The rest of Roman was boning anything that moved, but your only knowledge of Roman thought comes from the regretful, apologizing hedonist from Hippo?

You need to get out more. Why you people deny what god allegedly created in you is a mystery. “God is perfect” you yell, except for the part of us he created to enjoy sex. Does the hair shirt and the flagellation help you get off?

Ye Olde Statistician

The rest of Roman was boning anything that moved, but your only
knowledge of Roman thought comes from the regretful, apologizing
hedonist from Hippo?

No. One thinks of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and others. Also, you need a better appreciation of Roman society. The “One Percenters” may have been debauched and your fascination with the rich and famous makes them appear larger in your view; but the Romans only approved of loose sex when it involved “Those who cannot say no.” That is, slaves, boys, and lower class women. Patrician women were never to be treated in that manner.

KarenJo12

I notice you didn’t address the biggest part of her argument: what do couples who can’t afford more children do about sex? My guess is that your response is going to be that no couple is in such position. The wife should just suck it up and risk catastrophe because hubby can’t possibly ever be denied sex.

That is the worst thing about this argument. 1. Wives have to be obedient. 2. Wives can’t use contraception 3. So wives have no ability to tell their husbands no. Wives have to endure the misery their husbands cause but have no agency to change that. This is an evil system.

Ye Olde Statistician

what do
couples who can’t afford more children do about sex?
What does someone who can’t afford to put on more weight do about eating? Well, other than bulemia or the vomitorium. Of course, the Late Modern, being enslaved to the satisfaction of the appetites, will drop his jaw at this. Yet modern neuroscience shows that the habituation of such behavior (“vulcanizing the neural pathways,” in modern terms) disrupts neural patterns originating in the neocortex. Which is to say that indulging one’s appetites too often will eventually interfere with one’s ability to think rationally. Since humans are “rational animals,” this is a serious defect to human nature, and therefore objectively wrong.

The
wife should just suck it up and risk catastrophe because hubby can’t
possibly ever be denied sex.
So must the husband, who is actually much more likely to bully the wife into contrary behavior, lest he be “stuck” with fatherhood. But of course the wife can refuse sex when it is unreasonable, just as the husband can. Aquinas wrote that a husband who treated his wife as no more than a sex object commits a mortal sin — what we nowadays call “spousal rape.”

I’m not sure “suck it up” is apropos of a loving relationship.

An example of a “catastrophe” would be useful. My mother had five children and the only catastrophe was that one of them died of cancer at age 15, fifty years ago next Tuesday. Her mother (the one with the marriage manual) had three. My father’s mother had eight kids, one dying at birth, and the only other catastrophe was the Great Depression, unless you count her eldest son being shipped off to the Pacific at age 19. But I suspect that you mean a “catastrophe” due to the addition of another child. Darwin, who at least practiced what he preached, had ten children.

Certainly it would seem that a Late Modern would not be able to endure the sorts of things out immediate forebears did.

KarenJo12

Why should we bear those things? Modern medicine and prevent almost all mortality from bacterial diseases so there is no good reason for children to die from things like measles. Methotrexate is a thing so there is no reason, unless you’re Catholic, to die from an ectopic pregnancy. Modern sewers and water treatment prevent cholera and typhoid. I have the Internet, climate control, a refrigerator with an icemaker, an iPod, and Netflix. Why should I give up those things because my grandparents didn’t have them? I knew my grandparents very well and all of them would have jumped at the chance to use the Internet. They certainly went all in for electricity and running water, even though those things only came along when they were grown. (They were born in rural Texas between 1898 and 1903.)

As for your food analogy: people who need to lose weight don’t stop eating entirely, they simply change what they eat and add more exercise. That is not what your church requires of married couples who can’t have more children. Those couples have to stop having sex completely. They can’t even pet much, since all sex acts have to result in the man ejaculating into the woman’s vagina. You are suggesting that dieters become anorexics, not that they exercise prudence.

Carter

He is actually suggesting that couples act in a responsible manner. If they cannot afford another child then they should not engage in sex during periods when a woman is fertile. If they REALLY can’t afford another kid, then they shouldn’t have sex at all. But don’t worry, it’s ok. The last time I checked people weren’t dying from lack of sex.

“They can’t even pet much, since all sex acts have to result in the man ejaculating into the woman’s vagina.”

Please cite where this has been stated in either the article or the comments.

Ye Olde Statistician

Why should we bear those things? Modern medicine and prevent almost all mortality from bacterial diseases so there is no good reason for children to die from things like measles. …. Why should I give up those things because my grandparents didn’t have them?

No one told you to. Do not flail against strawmen, it wastes energy that could be better spent making substantive points. The point was not that we have #firstworldproblems, it’s that we don’t seem to bear them all that well.

As for your food analogy: … they exercise prudence.

Perhaps some sort of rhythm method applied to eating? Prudence… So religion does enter into it?

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

What is John C. Wright’s argument then for priviliging “mind blowing sex” over other connections that men and men and women and women and men and women might have? As for Socrates and his friends–they aren’t the only people of their day and there are many other cultures in the world that don’t regard sexual pleasure is some kind of failure or sin. Really, you all need to read a bit more widely.

Ye Olde Statistician

What is John C. Wright’s argument then for priviliging “mind blowing sex”

Probably troll-bait. And it seems to work. But I’m just guessing.

As for Socrates and his friends–they aren’t the only people of their day

True dat. There were also the ancient Athenian versions of Beavis and Butthead, but they did not leave many writings behind, let alone writings worth reading.

and there are many other cultures in the world that don’t regard sexual pleasure is some kind of failure or sin

Nor indeed did Latin Christendom. What they did regard — and again, this was in opposition to the other cultures of which you speak — is that it is a failure to treat women as sex objects.

Something Peter Brown wrote regarding a study of sex life in ancient Rome is apropos: we often read our own concerns and obsessions onto the past.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Ancient China, India, and Egypt are also in the world. I really have zero interest in Latin Christendom. Wright’s argument is a niche argument based on a really limited understanding of human nature, history, and sexuality. He mistakes it for a universal one because of his faulty use of language and his parochial view of the world. But the rest of don’t.

Lol

“Ancient China, India, and Egypt are also in the world. I really have zero interest in Latin Christendom. Wright’s argument is a niche argument based on a really limited understanding of human nature, history, and sexuality.”

Gosh, I think after your claim that you had “read Socrates” we all could have guessed that you have little interest in anything historical, but are you suggesting that China, India, and Egypt have superior cultures that we should heed and respect over our own? Perhaps we should throw out Wright’s proposal that a man should love his wife as he loves himself in favor of a Chinese, Indian, or Muslim view of women and wives?

For someone uninterested in Latin Christendom you are certainly quick to decry the foundation of the culture which allows you to walk down the street by yourself without being covered in a sheet and without the constant and driving fear of being raped to death by gangs of men.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

I’m an anthropologist and my field of study is South Asia so, yes I’m quite interested in world history. Of course I’ve read Plato and read about Socrates through Plato and other sources if your scare quotes around “read Socrates” are supposed to mean something? Most educated people have. Its not a really rarefied thing.

As for Latin Christendom–look: some aspects of Christianity are certainly foundational for modern western culture but many streams have flowed in and out of modern American life. Rape and rape by gangs of Christian men is, in fact, till a feature of our modern life if you care to open your newspaper or pay attention to current events. The best of Christianity is certainly very good–as is the best of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. The worst is very, very, bad.

Lol

I must be out of the loop since all of my news feeds seem to be mostly covering deadly gang-rapes in India right now. When I tried to run a Google search for these news stories you claim exist all I got were articles on gangs of Muslim men raping Christian women and girls, Indian gang-rapes and murders, and one interesting article from 2011 which cites an official Oslo police report which determined that all solved cases of rape in Norway in 2010 were committed by Muslims. So there’s that. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough?

Reading Plato is not a rarefied thing, but responding to a simple question like, “have you read Plato,” with, “I’m 53, you pathetic wanker, and I have read both Plato and Socrates,” is a statement which declares in no uncertain terms that you have read the works of Socrates.

And what precisely is so great about Hinduism? Is it the caste system? The pariahs? What about Islam? Surely you are not suggesting that Shariah Law is a net positive for anyone? Or female genital mutilation? The honor killings? Precisely which of Mohommad’s teachings would benefit the world if they were put into general practice? The countries where Buddhism has been practiced for centuries certainly don’t have anything like the freedom granted to Western women. The only notable exception I can think of is South Korea, a country with stong Western influences and a rapidly growing Christian population.

Shawn Smith

“Rape and rape by gangs of Christian men is, in fact, till a feature of our modern life if you care to open your newspaper or pay attention to current events.”

In the name of Christianity? To enforce Christian morality? Tell you what, why don’t you tell Samira Bellil she’s just as well of under the reign of Islam as she would be in a Christian society.

Your shitty moral equivalencies are disgusting.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Why, yes, to enforce anti lesbian attitudes in Africa. Rape to “turn her striaght” is quite common. The murder of homosexuals (men and women) is quite common in Africa and legal in Uganda thanks to the tutelage of US Christian Fundamentalists.

In addition women die in this country and in Ireland and Nicaragua thanks to Catholic teaching about abortion–that nice Indian woman (not even a Catholic) died in Ireland last year because the Doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy.

Your “shitty moral equivalences” and attempts to push all evil off onto other religions are disgusting. You might want to remember not to go looking for the motes in other people’s eyes when there is a beam in yours.

Lol

So your position is that rape, corrective rape, gang-rape, and child and infant rape, an epidemic in places like South Africa, violence towards homosexuals, and other acts like virgin cleansing are actually a result of Christian teaching and do not steam from a violent ethnic cultural tradition which in some cases precedes and in other cases supersedes any outside religious influence? Is your position that the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that it is morally right to rape and murder? I mean, in places like Zimbabwe where the virgin cleansing myth is prevalent it is mostly being perpetuated by indigenous healers. In places like Uganda, South Africa, and other African nations where a rabid cultural patriarchy still exists from pre-Colonial times even many priests actively conduct themselves in ways contrary to official Catholic Doctrine. Indeed, it has been argued that Christianity as a whole (not split into Catholic or Protestant but taken as a general group) is growing in large part because Christian stances on homosexuality and contraception would SEEM to mirror already existing cultural traditions among many African groups, but to seem similar is not necessarily to be similar. You claim to be an anthropologist, and yet you speak as if you are wholly ignorant of the intrinsically flexible nature of tribal oral customs. Or would you claim that Christianity is directly responsible for the practices of religious traditions like Vodoun or Islam? Or maybe you would argue that Christianity is responsible for every atrocity ever committed by any individual who claimed to be Catholic regardless of whether that individual acted in compliance with official Doctrine?

Ultimately, the primary difference is this: the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not support rape or murder. This is in direct opposition to religious practices like the caste system in the Hindu faith and jihad in Islam. A man who claims to be Christian and kills a homosexual commits a mortal sin in the eyes of God and the Church. Alternatively, a Muslim who kills an infidel for the sake of jihad would not be acting in opposition to his faith.

And it will be said one more time: even if Christianity is just one of many superstitious fairy-tales, it remains the only superstitious fairy-tale to propagate a culture in which women have intrinsic value and where freedom and equality are considered virtues to be admired and fought for.

“In addition women die in this country and in Ireland and Nicaragua thanks to Catholic teaching about abortion–that nice Indian woman (not even a Catholic) died in Ireland last year because the Doctors refused to terminate her pregnancy.”

As we all know, hard cases make for bad law, but the issue of abortion opens up an entirely new line of debate (and by all accounts situations in which abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother make up an absurdly small percentage of all the abortions committed worldwide on a yearly basis). If you don’t see an unborn baby as a human with intrinsic value then killing it for the sake of the mother’s life is a simple and logical choice. If you do see an unborn baby as a human with intrinsic value then demanding that doctors commit murder to save the life of another human with intrinsic value is not so simple.

Shawn Smith

You almost had me there. I almost thought you had a point. But then I realized that I’m talking about the *entire* Muslim world (including a growing part of Europe), and you’re talking about *one* Christian nation. Not only that, one non-Western Christian nation, which means Christianity has probably had relatively little time to shape the culture there, historically speaking.

And of course, in Muslim nations, it’s not one tiny minority of women who need to be afraid, but all women. There really is no comparison here.

By the way, do you even understand what “moral equivalency” means? You should really be deeply embarrassed by throwing around words you apparently don’t understand. Moral *equivalency* means saying that two things are morally the same. I was making a moral *distinction*, which is entirely the opposite.

You’re not very good at this.

Ye Olde Statistician

I really have zero interest in Latin Christendom

Too bad. Western law, parliaments, elections, jurisdiction, female emancipation, the university, natural science, the end of slavery, and all that are quite wonderful things. You may have zero interest in your mother, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t have one — and that what you learned at her knee hasn’t influenced you, even when you reject it. That’s what irritated Nietzsche so much. He found that even atheism was contaminated by Christian thinking.

Ancient China, India, and Egypt are also in the world had very little influence on the West. A few geegaws and gimcracks, usually at second or third hand. Egypt more than the other two, through its influence on early Greece statuary. But we do not have god-kings and have largely given up on mystical woo-woo — at least until recently.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Christianity is a form of mystical woo-woo.

Lol

Hmmm. A well formulated and incisive comeback. I’m certainly convinced, but wait…these are your own words regarding Christianity: “some aspects of Christianity are certainly foundational for modern western culture…” So I guess maybe we all owe Christianity at least a small debt of gratitude.

Do you refer to your constantly touted non-Western religions as “mystical woo-woo” too?

Shawn Smith

I highly doubt she would ever refer to Islam so. Like most leftists, she’s most likely too terrified of Islam to criticize it. Also like most leftists, she probably pretends this cowardice is some kind of virtue of “tolerance”, which, as you’ve seen here, is never displayed towards those they actually disagree with.

Ye Olde Statistician

If so, it is the only form of mystical woo-woo that has insisted on applying logic and reason to its own beliefs; that regarded the heavens as “just another created thing” (rather than “alive, divine, and influential in human affairs”); that has no use for crystal therapies, horoscopes, Pythagorean number-magic, and the like. Though, mind, in the Late Modern age one can find all sorts of idiosyncratic individualistis sects and it is well to remember that no matter how noisy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Bible Thumping Shack may be, two-thirds of all Christians remain adherents to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

bekabot

“A woman could go her whole life and never have a sonnet written to her glory.”

You’re delightful, Mr. Wright, and I hate to break it to you, but most women do go through life never having a sonnet written to their glory. Such is the female lot. Which is understandable, because people who are one-up on a hierarchical ladder can’t be expected to spend much time contemplating the “glory” of the people who are one-down. That’s just the way it works. Once again, sorry. Some notions don’t work out the way they’re supposed to.

“Are you ready now for your secret? The most ecstatic and longest lasting orgasms, one after another after another”

I hope you’re not promising men what you seem to be promising them here. I hope you’re not, because I can’t help worrying that when they don’t get it they’ll blame the women they’re with and not you.

Ye Olde Statistician

You are right. The teaching of poetry these days is woefully inadequate.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

You are woefully full of shit–my husband writes me a sonnet, or even occasionally an epic, on every Birthday. He’s also written me a blues song and a rock song. In the liberal world of companionate marriage this is not at all unusual. All the men I know, in the good liberal marriages, are seriously in love with their wives even after years of marriage and the few children we have decided to have. The idea that John C. Wright’s marriage to his wife is any thing special is absurd. The only thing I need to point out is that they only have four children so either they aren’t having very much mind blowing sex at all or they are using contraception while denying it for propaganda purposes.

Ye Olde Statistician

Congratulations on your poetic husband. Evidently you are in a Friedehe, as the Church encouraged, and not a Muntehe.

But your speculative ad hominem regarding the Wrights is simply more evidence of the Late Modern flight from Reason. Instead of debating the question, you must bad-mouth the questioner. I could think of several reasons why they have only four children — and I happen to know that one is adopted from China.

KarenJo12

So they’ve only ever had sex three times? Wow.

Carter

You really must explain how this ridiculous remark follows from anything that has been said. Are you operating under the impression that every time a man and woman have unprotected sex it results in a pregnancy?

Shawn Smith

No, she is under the impression that John C. Wright is one of the Greek gods. Every one of their pairings bore fruit.

Ye Olde Statistician

Why are you obsessed over Mrs. Wright’s sex life?

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Tedious auto didact and fake intellectual is tedious and fake. I did n’t atack Wright’s marriage to his wife–I simply pointed out that its vaunted virtues are not unusual and are in fact typical of companionate marriages. The kinds liberals and radicals have been espousing for a long time. As for “bad mouthing the questioner” if by that you mean you, well–you have resorted the quite nasty innuendos about your imaginary enemies all through all these comments. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

As for the charming bit of weepy bait about the adoption from China–so what? I know plenty of children adopted from China. I don’t take sex tips from their parents or inquire into whether they did so for reasons of infertility, because they were in same sex marriages, or because they were unmarried or simply concerned about overpopulation.

JRL

Quite a few twisted panties in the audience. John’s correct in my experience: there is an extra dimension to making love when you want to make a baby. It’s a spiritual connection and there’s a bit of awe in there too. It’s the complete package.

delurking

Have you ever made babies, JRL? I have. Frankly, the spiritual connection better exist before you make the babies, or you’ve got no business creating children.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

Agreed. delurking is right. Of course deciding to make a baby with the person you love is a very special thing but that doesn’t mean that the sex itself is mind-blowing, or more pleasurable than the sex you have that expresses the same love and devotion when you are not trying to get pregnant. I’d also like to point out that there are very devoted couples–gay couples–who adopt. Why is their sexual relationship any the less? And there are couples who, for one reason or another can’t have biological children who adopt–are their sexual relations somehow impure or meaningless just because they don’t result in children? How obscene to make this argument which, by implication, Wright does.

JRL

You are begging the question. Non-procreative sex does not express “the same love and devotion”. It can be mind-blowing and an expression of great love and devotion, but it is not a full giving of yourself to the other. Procreative sex is – it is a fuller expression of love and devotion.

Gay couples cannot experience the wonder, romance and eroticism of this fullest sense of giving. Infertile couples can hope that they will have children by the act. They are, at the least, closer to it than gay sex.

http://aimaiameye.blogspot.com/ Aimai

You have literally nothing backing that up but assertion. Just saying things doesn’t make them true. I’m in a heterosexual marriage and have been happilly having non procreative sex for many years now and I have not experienced any diminution of the love and devotion I offer to my husband, or he to me, because we chose to use contraception after our family was the size we wanted. My parents are in their 80′s and still have non procreative sex and a more passionate, devoted, and loving relationship has never been seen. Love and devotion–passionate giving of oneself to another person–occurs in many ways throughout a marriage or a love relationship. Not only is procreative sex not the highest form of sex, its not the only or the highest form of giving of oneself to another person.

JRL

…and you are doing nothing but making assertions yourself.

I did not deny non-procreative sex can be passionate, loving, etc.

But, and I think you can agree with me, non-procreative and procreative sex are different.

Take your most passionate and loving non-procreative sex…it is still missing something. It is still not the fullest expression of sex of which you are capable.

Because the most basic function of sex is procreation. That is an assertion and a fact.

Shawn Smith

“Frankly, the spiritual connection better exist before you make the babies,”

And yet another instance of criticizing something the writer did not say. It’s almost like you people can’t read very well, or like you know you can’t win an honest argument.

Billcoop4

Do you do that with your right hand or your left? Or is just with a pillow?

SUNIX

Yup, just as predicted, a variety of cynics came out to take a swing at this great article
and women are particularly offended and bitter; itâ€™s a festival of fallacies! I see straw men arguments, hasty generalizations, ad hominem attacks, slippery slopes, yee haaw! Almost a complete course in liberal bull crap writing techniques! I’ve learned a lot.

David Howarth

John is a hopelessly deluded benighted medievalist moron.

Lindsay Saltsman

Terrible writing. Was hard to read. I skipped most of it. That’s never a good thing.

Shawn Smith

TL;DR. QED he is wrong.

http://www.socionomics.net/press/book_reviews/Calderwood_TomorrowsHeadlines.html David C.

To each his own.

Physical intimacy is a path to enhancing emotional intimacy, and emotional intimacy is (to me) an important part of the union of husband and wife. This is a simple reason why today’s emphasis on physical intimacy is a vice (a self-harming mistake people make in their personal quest for happiness.)

Mr. Wright must somehow think that having a dozen children is a good thing, as any biologically compatible couple who shares an active (physical) love life and who do not attempt to manage (control) conceptions is going to have one baby after another for 20 years. This may or may not still be Catholic doctrine, but it’s absolutely asinine due to the simple fact that TIME is limited, and diffusing parenting (and finances) at a high rate is often a prescription for non-success.

Practice, Mr. Wright. Intimate practice moves people toward your goal of perfection. Is this not enough? Also, does this mean that the most perfect sex becomes impossible after a wife hits menopause? I don’t see how one can read Mr. Wright’s comment without concluding this.

Here we are, yet another keyboard-enabled person who feels entitled to tell the rest of us how stupid we are for living lives that deviate in any way from his notion of the ideal. Perhaps Mr. Wright hasn’t lived long enough, and passed through enough of the wonderful stages of life, to grasp a larger understanding.

Az

Wow such drivel.

Monaka der Hund

Thanks for the recommendation.

“you must swear, swear by Holy God and your hope of heaven, never to leave herâ€ť

Can I swear by something else in case I have no hope of heaven?

Booch Paradise

God knows, truly knows, what you’ve done and what you are. You’re mask doesn’t fool Him for a second. And in spite of all that, He decided it was worth it to do what needed to be done to save you. And no matter how bad any of your personal baggage is, the sacrifice of His son was greater. And He is willing to forgive you, and change you, and make you His child. All you have to do is ask.

Monaka der Hund

See, that is one of the reasons I have no hope of heaven. I am fully aware that my sex can’t come close to that of Christians, but I would really like to know if swearing by something else will provide me similar mind-blowing sex.

plainsman844

AHHHahaha! What a pompous, science-illiterate git. Alpha male? Procreation only? Just the kind of preposterous tripe to be expected from a conservative Catholic – I’m sure the MRA types are lapping this misogynistic nonsense up as well.

Martin Wagner

So true love can only exist in a master/servant arrangement, and even married couples should be abstinent unless they’re ready for parenthood, because sex is only “mind-blowing” when it is understood as merely a mechanical body function for the act of breeding.

It is possible someone, somewhere in the world has a more warped and toxic concept of how actual emotional intimacy and love between adults works, but I hope never to meet that person.

I’m so confused. I’m supposed to have sex and make it all about making babies. But I’m a trans woman, and on hormones, so I’m likely infertile and my parts don’t work that way anyway. Oh, and I’m a lesbian. And my partner is a woman. We’re both women. What do? We can’t make babies! And about the “vow to love and honor and obey”. Do we take turns or something? Because there isn’t a man to do the cherishing.

But I’m glad that our sex life is meaningless, because I can kick back and put in whatever meaning happens to arise from our joyful enjoyment of each other. Cis-hets are weird.

Chakso

This is one of the weirdest most retarded things I’ve ever read. Straight out of the dark ages.

geraldfnord

In another column, Mr Wright writes with passion about the folly of thinking that indivduals with similar genetics or occupations could be assumed to be alike in their needs, attitudes, best interests, &c.. Here, he seems content with ideas about the needs and desires of the sexes that are claimed to be valid without exception because a god made them so by nature. This god’s existence is not obvious to all or even most people (and since Mr Wright is not a T.U.L.I.P.ian, he doesn’t necessarily believe that such were in fact an argument for that god’s existence, total depravity and particular atonement and the grace stemming from it being what they are in that scheme), and even those who do claim to believe in that god don’t agree with Mr Wright in all particulars, nor in these. (Some of them, for example, believe oral sex to be a perversion even within the bonds of marriage, others that it were permissible and even laudable within those bonds when it led to potentially procreative [or at least formally so, in the case of the sterile] sex, others approve when it were the best that could be managed….)

It seems quite possible to me that he is comparing the sex he had before his conversion and current choice of partner with that before, finds it much better now, and wishes to claim that your sex will not be as satisfying as his until you act and believe just as he does. If so, the first claim is unassailable…as unassailable as my claim that I would be disgusted by my wife’s ‘obedience’ to me save in the very loose sense that her default behaviour should be to give my attitudes, wishes, desires, opinions a greater benefit-of-a-doubt not proper to the general run of humanity’s. (…and since we believe I owe her the same, to characterise such as a “wife”‘s obedience miscategorises it, as does calling it ‘obedience’ at all when it is but love and consideration between roughly equal persons.)

In the absence of an objective {sexual mind-blowingness}-ometer and some test-subjects, I will withhold judgement of his other claims’ general validity, but will note that the greater the announced pay-off and the less it really seems to have to do with the cost, the more it sounds like advertising of the sort in which consumption of beer makes an average-looking man intensely attractive to the bikini-clad women who always seem to show up out of nowhere. This is much as how any product whose main selling-point is that failure to buy it will inevitably lead to some sort of Doom (Hell, absolute rule by the wealthy or the Space Masons, Stalinism, the death of all living things [lichens are _tough!], the mockery of the Cool Kids) announces itself to me to be a product lacking much of a valid value proposition.

(And finally—sorry for the caffeinated prolixity—I’ll note that I have not received many of the messages Mr Wright claims I have been scandalously sent, but of those I recognise from my life most of those will have come from the Market, whose normative image of humanity is exactly the autonomous consumer of pleasure he derides. I would guess that as a traditionalist[?] Catholic this assessment would not necessarily be contrary to his beliefs about the City of Man—what good can come of the sin of usury’s being made the foundation of a society?—but note this because there are many people with whom I might agree about many things but who seem not to understand that many different things are called ‘conservative’.)

Raptor Ackbar

I invite you to go fuck yourself, Mr Wright. Anyone hoping to learn ‘mind-blowing sex’ from you is unequivocally doing it wrong.